White House says Israel's Netanyahu opted to cancel visit with Obama

Mar 10, 2016, 04:59
White House says Israel's Netanyahu opted to cancel visit with Obama

The White House said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to cancel a planned meeting this month with President Obama.

The White House said the Israeli government had requested a Netanyahu meeting with Obama on either March 18 or 19 and that two weeks ago he was offered a March 18 encounter.

"We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting", said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.

By Monday evening, Netanyahu appeared to be in damage control mode, with unnamed aides saying that he had chose to cancel his trip to Washington due to concerns over appearing to influence the USA presidential election, rather than because of a snub from the White House. He's calling the move surprising.

The White House said Israel had proposed two dates for a meeting between the leaders and the USA had offered to meet on one of those days.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined an opportunity to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and canceled his trip to the United States.

This was not the first time Obama had been caught off guard by Netanyahu's travel plans.

Netanyahu's decision to decline the offer marks the latest episode in a fraught diplomatic relationship between Obama and the Israeli leader, Reuters report.

The statement from Netanyahu's office, which contended no meeting had ever been scheduled, was a sign of lingering tensions between Jerusalem and Washington, coming hours before US Vice President Joe Biden was slated to visit Israel for high level talks.

The White House has said that Biden will not be pursuing any major new peace initiatives during his visit, even though a wave of violence since October has killed more than 200 people.

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Biden will meet with Netanyahu and later in the day he will travel to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

"At the moment, it looks like we're not going to Washington", the official told The Times of Israel ahead of the official announcement.

The official added: "Also, at AIPAC, numerous presidential candidates are giving speeches and might ask for meetings with the PM".

"It is no secret that the Prime Minister and I have had a strong disagreement on this narrow issue, but we don't have a disagreement on the need to make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon and we don't have a disagreement about the importance of us blunting destabilizing activities that Iran may be taking", he said.

The prime minister will instead address the AIPAC conference on March 20 via satellite. "Reports that we were not able to accommodate the Prime Minister's schedule are false".

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